It'd be tough to call the 1080 Ti a bottleneck, as it's one of the most powerful GPU's currently available in the consumer space. While, technically speaking, it will be the limiting factor for gaming performance, that "limit" will generally be 4K/60+FPS gaming under max settings ... if the benchmarks hold with similar systems we've tested in the past.

As much as many a gamer might dream of it, a high core count system like this isn't typically looked at solely for gaming. If you only wanted a gaming PC, you could get similar performance (at least with most games) for a lot less.

So while it will certainly operate with ease under modern gaming scenarios, Ryzen Threadripper CPU's are primarily targeted at high end creative applications (3D modeling/video rendering/editing) or any other intensive processing applications that leverage the high core count (often along with lots of memory) more effectively than their lower core-count cousins (such as the Ryzen 3/5/7 processors) could do.

Anyway, be sure to check back later -- we'll be posting a Completed Build with some benchmarks that can offer more details on how the ultimately system performs past the one 3DMark result we had time to run during the live stream.

It depends a good bit on the specifics of the card as well as the airflow provided by the case/case fans. Glancing back over our past 1080 Ti builds, it's varied from ~30-50C at idle.

That said, we tested this build in an open case setup before building it out and check back to my notes under that situation (open air) the GPU's idled around 42/47C, so there's something to be said for getting more air moving across the system, especially with dual cards building up their heat together. The idle/load testing was done with the front case fans on their default (quieter) setting, so it might have performed closer to the open test had we cranked them higher.

We haven't defined a benchmark for The Witcher 3 yet, but a bit of quick test playing (the first couple areas when you head outside to start training) at 4K/Ultra/FullScreen saw an average of 84 fps. Minimum I saw during the gameplay was ~75fps and as you moved around quite often saw peaks around 100 fps.

You can get the non-elite version if it's not available. (it's the gray/silver version). The front side of the card isn't highly visible and would still look sharp reflecting the red LED bar. That said, if you want the card to actually be red, a quick edit of the part list ans GPU search filtered by red options that might complement the build came up with two more options you might take a look at.

Hmm. Newegg had this version previously, but looks like it's run out of stock. It looks like Amazon has the non-RGB editions in both Black and White, but then you'd need to add your own RGB fan solution. Thanks for pointing it out -- I'll reach out to Anidees and see when we might expect to see more availability.

It looks like the front fans on the Focus G are attached to machined holes, but the rear fan mount is designed for a more typical self-tapping fan screws. If you were to buy an additional fan for mounting at the rear of the case, it would typically come with these (or a similar vibration-reducing alternative) for mounting.

A quick search of online stores mostly found 30 or 50 packs of these screws for $5-8. You might check if you can find a smaller quantity pack (since you only need 4) or something at a local electronics or hardware store, because at $5 you might consider just spending that same money (or slightly more) to get a third fan for back there.

A 200mm PSU might not work out. Fractal puts the 175mm upper limit in their spec sheet, and they note where removing the cage changes other specs, such as for the front radiator options.

Taking a look inside the case, there's a bump above the bottom side pull out vent that you'd end up running into. Difficult to tell for sure by only looking at it, but it looks a bit higher than the "feet" that the PSU sits on, meaning it would probably not allow the PSU to mount straight into that space (if it fit at all).

Sounds like a fun upgrade plan! I honestly don't know off hand for sure, as I don't have a similar GPU setup on hand to test in the case, but what you're proposing seems reasonable. The 120mm EVGA radiator is listed at 119mm wide and there's 125mm of clearance. It doesn't look like you'd have an issue on height either.

Also, according to the case specs, it looks like you're fine mounting a 240mm radiator up top instead of the front so long as the motherboard components don't exceed 40mm in height, so just keep an eye on the top edge of the motherboard when making your selection. That's not something we would currently catch as an issue given a 240mm radiator can be placed without similar restrictions at the front of the case. Did you have a motherboard in mind?

The nVidia cards we used were founders editions available only through nVidia directly. You can certainly swap them out for something else. One thing to consider is these use a reference cooling design which pushes the air out the back of the case, whereas most non-reference coolers (like the FTW cards) will push air out all sides of the card. It should be fine with those 3 fans pushing air across the system, but it will likely have a different temperature profile (the extra heat from the higher clocked cards will impact that as well).

You can edit this build to play with changes to verify if there are any compatibility issues. It looks like the 1080 FTW is fine. The main thing to watch for when swapping GPU's will probably be the card length. Our compatibility engine should catch any issues like that.

The spacing issue is going to happen with any GPU paired with this motherboard and case. The motherboard has a plastic cover over the sound card area (right below where the GPU mounts at the back of the case). In most cases, this wouldn't be an issue, but the version of the Anidees AI Crystal we had didn't give you much room to work with for the PCIe slot bracket to fit. It's definitely a notable quirk of this case which will only happen with certain motherboards. That said, with a bit of careful alignment and "gentle" pressure, it's not a huge deal.

We've not tested that specifically, but I wouldn't expect any significant difference between the bridges, so long as they are the High Bandwidth ("HB") versions. Our decision was purely based on aesthetics and what we could get in time for this build. We loved how the Zotac one looked, and since we had vendor neutral nVidia cards we weren't looking to make it "match" anything else. We've used the EVGA ones in the past as well and I think it would look nice as well with this motherboard.

So it's been a while since you asked, but I thought I'd follow up as Barry took our Meshify C build to QuakeCon at the end of August and decided to add RGB lighting to the system for full effect.

He ended up tossing in a Hue+ (since he wanted to use CAM to control the H7 Quad Lumi's lighting as well) and routed the lighting to the front of the case. (You could also use the motherboard's on-board AURA RGB header with a compatible LED strip.)

Anyway, it actually came out pretty slick -- highlighting the mesh pattern rather dramatically. I've added a picture to the end of the current images to show you how it ended up looking.

The case has a removable dust filter on the bottom as well as two (screw mounted) dust filters on the top. The front has a filter as well, but I believe you have to pop off the entire front panel to clean it.

We certainly try to route them in reasonable locations as we go, so that it looks okay from the front and (hopefully) we don't have to unplug/move/re-plug in too many things after the test boot.. That said, Barry would probably take issue with the notion that things looked great before we let him attack the nest of craziness hidden at the back of the case. ;)

So an SSD is certainly helpful to system performance (generally snappiness, and of particular practicality, multiplayer level loading). But you might want to take things down a notch here -- some folks would never build without one, while others get along fine without it. That's okay.

To give you insight on our part selection, we simply chose to keep the budget down a bit by leaving out an SSD. We haven't needed to do that in a budget build in a while, but RAM/GPU and SSD prices in general right now pushed us in that direction as we played with this part list. We recognize others might want to choose differently, but we like to offer a variety of builds to show how they perform. And in the end, we were still quite happy with the system's overall performance.

You can watch the cable management video to see what Barry did with it. Overall, it only offers rather basic options to work with. Most notable is that there's not a lot of tie down points in the back, so you're left to mostly secure the cables to themselves. That said, since the Nova TG's back panel is punched out, giving pretty ample space, it worked fine, even with our thick 24 pin PSU cable. So, while it's doesn't really offer great cable management options, it was relatively easy to deal with.

Sorry -- completely missed your question, but also not sure what you are asking. The fans are oriented to intake fresh air from the top of the case and push it across the radiator into the case interior.

The main advice would be to make sure you are running the latest BIOS. We saw a lot of issues in the early months of Ryzen motherboards, but our more recent builds we've done haven't had any issue getting to 3000 MHz if the BIOS is current.

Necessity is a pretty strong word. While you don't have to argue the benefits of the OS and multiplayer games with large level loads being installed onto an SSD, it's not preferable to having sufficient space for your build's needs. Especially since SSDs/HDDs are about the simplest of "do it later"/additive upgrades you can plan when budget dollars are strained.

So if you can get away with holding off on the HDD until later and manage with a small SSD for now, then great. Otherwise, I'd recommend having the sufficiently sized HDD and adding an SSD later.

Storage can be a pretty personal choice which changes based on needs, so if a small SSD works well enough instead of getting a larger HDD, then I wouldn't argue. It's also an easy upgrade down the road (either way).